Single-sex schools

7PISA 2009 and LSAY09 sampling designs

Since data were collected from the population of 15-year-olds, regardless of their grade level, this paper, although not longitudinal in nature, utilises information collected in different years (known as survey waves, as illustrated in figure 1). Occupational expectations were measured in Wave 1, while the information about subject choices in Year 11 is pooled over three years (figure 1).

Figure 1 Data by school year and wave in LSAY09

LSAY09 cohort
Wave 1	2009		Wave 2	2010		Wave 3	2011
Year	n		Year	n		Year	n
						10	16
9 or below	1 502		10 or below	892		11	694
10	10 093		11	5 342		12	4 488
11	2 646		12	1 747
12	10
Not at school	0		Not at school	778		Not at school	2 428
Total___14_251'>Total	14 251		Total	8 759		Total	7 626

Weighted estimates

The LSAY09 sample is not ideal for estimations of how school characteristics influence subject choice in Years 11 and 12. This is because the information about schools was collected in 2009 when most students were in Year 10. Therefore, this analysis is based on data from students who provided information about subjects in Year 11 (shaded rows of figure 1) except for 822 students (a weighted estimate) who changed schools after 2009. Despite these limitations, the LSAY data remain the best available source of information on the school characteristics, career plans, subject participation and science performance of secondary school students. There is no other survey which covers all these topics.

Although Australia is often considered a country where a significant proportion of secondary students attend single-sex schools (Ainley & Daly 2002; Baker, Riordan & Schaub 1995), the proportion of students in single-sex schools is not high in LSAY09. Among 353 schools for which data are available, there are only 19 boys-only schools and 26 girls-only schools, which make up 5.4% and 7.4% of schools respectively (figure 2).

Furthermore, sex-segregated education seems to be declining in Australia in line with trends documented in the 1980s and 1990s (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS] 1997) and reported for other English-speaking countries (Ainley & Daly 2002). In 1998, about 24% of students attended single-sex schools, with a larger proportion of girls than boys receiving education in segregated settings. This trend is also evident in the LSAY03 data, in which 10% and 9% of students attended girls-only and boys-only schools respectively. By 2009 the proportions of students in sex-segregated environments had further declined as, among 15-year-olds, only 9% of girls and 6% of boys were not in coeducational schools.

Figure 2 Gender compositions of schools in LSAY09

Source: LSAY09.

Thus, even though Australia arguably represents a moderately sex-segregated system (Wiseman 2008), the actual proportion of students in sex-segregated upper secondary school settings is low and seems to be decreasing with time.